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I could wait no longer and jumped in. Especially the commentary by Karl Ameis is very helpful so far.I have however a question about the following verse:

εἰ δέ κε μὴ δώωσιν ἐγὼ δέ κεν αὐτὸς ἕλωμαι

ἕλωμαι must be a subjunctive used instead of the future indicative; conjunctivus futuralis it is called in my Dutch grammar of Homeric Greek. But I'm not sure about δώωσιν: is it also a conjunctivus futuralis (sorry, I'm not familiar with the English term) or a subjunctive in the proteasis of a future more vivid conditional sentence. It seems to be somewhere in between.

Second question: is the use of the subjunctive for the future indicative restricted to Homer? I never encountered it in Atttic.

Well, you are asking difficult questions! I'm kind of weak with Greek conditional sentences. For me this seems natural, but I don't know why - it's just that I'm more familiar with Homeric Greek than with Attic. Other people will probably be able to articulate an answer and then I will learn something new too...

I suppose this is a sort of answer to your second question. SCHW. refers to a Greek grammar by Schwützer, Debrünner, Georgacas and Radt. I have never seen that book, perhaps you have access to that? (unfortunately the don't refer to Chantraine here, since the commentary is aimed at German speakers)

If that's the sort of thing you are asking, you'll have to get your Chantraine vol 2 pretty soon! (I didn't have the time to look there yet myself)

Ah, indeed - the Basel Gesammtkommentar are recent (rather expensive) commentaries in German on individual books of the Iliad. Since you are familiar with German, they are an alternative to the Oxford/Cambridge commentaries. So, if you still insist on getting more books, you might consider them... For each book that has a commentary, there is one volume with the Greek text (West's edition) + a translation and another volume with the commentary.

Thanks, Paul. I like what the Basel Gesammtkommentar has to say about the subjunctive as future (prospektiver Konjunktivus); the concept makes sense when put in that way. I wil refrain however -with some difficulty- from buying more books at least for the moment. Ameis is just the right level for what I need now.

Ameis is great; while the Gesamtkommentar is "based on Ameis-Hentze-Cauer" and is LOT thicker, the old Ameis actually manages to say so much more with so few words that it's really amazing. There's actually quite a lot in Ameis that has even been dropped out of the new Gesamtkommentar. Of course, Ameis is just a Grammar help, it doesn't include any discussion of realia.

By the way, are you using the Very Olde Ameis, or a later one revised by Hentze and then by Cauer?

I was just curious, I don't suppose it makes any real difference. It's just that I find it interesting that these books are so old but still very useful. The latest edition of books 1-3 is from 1913, funny they didn't put that into archive.org, though I don't really think it matters.

I think the Anhang is a collection of scholarly notes and much more outdated than the commentary itself.

Bart, many developments have occurred in Homeric studies since 1913--the oral formulaic theory, the recognition that Homeric language is a Kunstsprache (Meister), the analysis of type-scenes (Arendt), a better understanding of Greek history and pre-history, the history of the text, especially in light of the huge number of papyrus finds. Knowing something about these developments will enhance your experience of Homer.

While Ameis-Henze may still be useful, you may want to supplement it with Willcock's commentary, which, I think, dates from the 1970s, and/or the introductory volume to the new German "Basel" commentary, which has articles on a number of key developments, if you're not ready to plunge into the Cambridge commentary, which would run around USD $300 or more, or individual volumes of the Basel commentary, which are even more expensive even if you only buy all the volumes that are currently available. The Cambridge commentary includes articles on many aspects of recent Homeric scholarship, and if you're really serious about engaging with the Iliad, it's well worth the money. I don't have access to the new Basel commentary, and there's a limit to how much I'm willing to spend on Homer alone. (I did buy the Homer Encyclopedia, which is very expensive and has a lot of up to date information.)

One small (but nevertheless not cheap) book I would highly recommend is Jasper Griffin's Homer on Life and Death. It's a purely literary study--it refuses to engage with all of the extraneous (but in my view worthwhile) scholarly developments in Homeric studies and focuses almost exclusively on the meaning of the text--but in my experience it's one of the most illuminating discussions of Homer, primarily the Iliad.

I do not want to sound too much as a Karl Ameis cheerleader, but so far his commentary is very good indeed on grammar and syntax. I'm convinced however he is totally outdated in every other aspect and I do plan to engage with more up to date secundary literature. But this is a hobby and I have only a limited amount of time available to study Greek, so I have to set priorities. At the moment this means the actual text itself, and reading Greek, lots of it. I plan to read the Iliad from cover to cover, and although I do not exactly have a deadline, I would like to finish in a reasonable amount time, let's say a year or so. At my current reading speed I can read one book of the Iliad in approximately three weeks. That does not leave much time for anything else. Maybe I'll pick up speed as I progress, we'll see.

To be sure that I'm not completely stuck in a late 19th century mindset, I orderd Willcock's commentary. I'll let you know how it holds up to Ameis.

I do not want to sound too much as a Karl Ameis cheerleader, but so far his commentary is very good indeed on grammar and syntax.

By 1913, most of the details of Homeric grammar and syntax had been thoroughly investigated--the results are collected in Chantraine's Grammaire. So Ameis-Henze should be reliable on those issues. Actually Monro's Homeric Grammar, which is dated 1891, is still useful.

But the great upheaval in Homeric studies came about in the 1920-1930 timeframe, with Parry (1928), Meister (1921) and Arend (1930), among others. Much of the Homeric scholarship since then has consisted of an elaboration of these scholars' pathbreaking insights, which are not unrelated to one another. Some links:

Your post reminds me how little I know about Homeric studies. Reading so far is a treat. Ameis together with Willcock solve most problems, I hardly ever have to take a look at a translation. However it is hard not to get distracted. A few days ago I got stuck on the word 'κεχαροίατο' (Iliad 256); Ameis-Hentze told me it is a reduplicated aorist. I checked my Dutch Homeric Grammar for such a relatively strange beast, changed to Smyth and ended being lost for hours in Chantraine's Morphologie historique du grec. And here you provide all these links to material that look both fascinating and essential. Oh well, Homer long, life too short, etcetera...

Exactly! Having myself lost totally control with Homer I know what you are saying. That's why I've been recommending Ameis - because it does an astonishingly good job at providing just the help you need to understand the Greek without distracting you. Have you read the Iliad before in a living language? Especially if you have not, I think there's a point in trying to just read the Greek without bothering about the commentaries too much. That's not what I did, and I regret it a bit, because I didn't know about Ameis. You can always read the other stuff later, but you can read the Iliad in the original for the first time only once. There's not much point in reading Homer without reading about Homeric studies, but you don't have to do everything at once.